The orchard in back of the neighbor’s house
was once part of a larger concern,
with acreage that spread to the west and south,
since sold off, clear-cut, and burned.

The trees that remain still stand in rough rows,
though it’s years since one has been pruned;
their boughs are gnarled, and what little fruit grows
is spotted with blight or bug-ruined.

These were apple trees once in halcyon days,
when each tree stood full with esteem;
they bled the rich earth and blossomed each May
in a blizzard of white thick as cream.

I walk these rows now in summer’s soft dusk
between trees listless and lank,
and lament that trunks once thick are mere husks,
decrepit, dying and rank. 

Such is how death is for both man and tree
in this grove on a hillock of earth--
we seek solace from past fecundity,
permanence in temporal rebirth.

If life has purpose, maybe it is found
in the example of these old trees;
they stand against time as the world wheels round
to still flower and perfume the breeze.

© by Mike Orlock.
Used with the author’s permission.